Abandoned nets choking our seas

HUNDREDS of marine animals are being strangled, drowned or starved to death after becoming tangled in "ghost" fishing nets off northern Australia.

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HUNDREDS of marine animals are being strangled, drowned or starved to death after becoming tangled in "ghost" fishing nets off northern Australia.

New figures show 10,034 such nets have been removed from beaches and mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria since 2004.

Ghost Nets Australia project co-ordinator Riki Gunn said the environmental impact was significant with hundreds of turtles, dugongs, fish, stingrays, crabs and sharks maimed or killed after becoming entangled.

She said the combination of monsoonal winds and the clockwise gyre current meant the Gulf of Carpentaria acted like a plughole for ghost nets.

"That combination drives the nets into the northwest Cape region where they get swept into the Gulf from the Arafura and Timor seas, touching parts of the coast on the way," she said.

"The high incidence of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in that area suggests they most likely come from that region."

GNA project officer Jen Goldberg, who has spent the past few weeks collating the data collected by indigenous land and sea rangers, said some of the nets were massive, weighing several tonnes.

In one two-year period, 622 nets were removed from Flinders Beach near Mapoon, on the western edge of the Cape York Peninsula, an area described as a ghost net "hot spot".

Seventy-five per cent of marine animals trapped in nets along the Gulf coast were turtles.

"Something the size of a football is enough to entangle an animal and impair its ability to feed, but they (nets) also smother reefs and corals, destroying ecosystems," Ms Goldberg said.

It has been estimated 90 per cent of marine debris washing into Australian waters is fishing-related and originates in South-East Asia.

CSIRO research scientist Dr Denise Hardesty said the Gulf of Carpentaria and a stretch of coastline in western Tasmania had a higher rate of ghost nets than anywhere else in Australia.

"We are trying to identify where those nets are coming from by looking at the characteristics of the netting and using oceanographic models to see the likely path they took, identify who is using these nets, where they are using them and why they are washing up where they are," she said.

"The goal is not to point the finger but to come up with workable solutions to what is a global problem."

Net disposal points at ports, buyback schemes for worn nets and tracking devices on nets may be among the solutions, she said.